


anchor up to me, love

by halcyonhowl (foxmoon)



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Coming Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Falling In Love, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, Kravitz/Past Wife, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Romance, coming out while married, mentions of children
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:21:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22322515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxmoon/pseuds/halcyonhowl
Summary: When Kravitz was alive, he was married to a woman. Then he came out. This is a story about the struggle of coming out later in life, and the often fraught emotional journey to eventually finding true happiness.
Relationships: Kravitz/Taako (The Adventure Zone)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 76





	anchor up to me, love

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as cathartic prose to process my personal experience. I am very nervous to put this out there but I feel like it's important to tell my story in some way. Thanks so much for reading. <3

Long ago, when Kravitz was alive, he was married to a woman. They had two children and lived in a small home with a small courtyard in the center. He loved his wife, but he knew something was very off. He was used to pushing that feeling as far down as he could, though, so he ignored it. In time, he realized that his feelings for her were platonic all along. Never passionate, never _ romantic, _ like how everyone said it should be. It was more like how one feels about a very dear friend. No less important, but not in alignment with the kind of love she felt for him. What’s worse, he was not attracted to her physically, and it was a source of immense guilt. Why not? What was wrong with him? She was  _ beautiful _ . He could see that.

But…

Since he was a boy, he was drawn to other boys. He wanted their attention, to be liked by them. Yet they would make fun of him for being sensitive. When he was a teen, he was drawn to other teen boys, and fantasized about them, but didn’t dare tell anyone. He knew he was attracted to them, very much, in all the ways one can be attracted. He even thinks (in retrospect) that he fell in love with his best friend, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t natural. (It was disgusting and vile, it was  _ wrong _ – he heard in his father’s voice, in his grandparents’ voices, in the voices of his friends). 

In very early adulthood, he almost…  _ almost _ … but no. _ Please…no _ . 

Finally, in his mid twenties, he met a woman. The daughter of a textile merchant in Neverwinter. He really liked her. She was funny and enjoyed a lot of the same things as him. Music, for instance. They could talk for hours about music. He felt comfortable around her, much like he had around the girls he befriended as a boy. They had fun together. It made his parents happy for him to marry her, and he wanted children. Eventually there were two adorable, wonderful kids and he couldn’t be happier than when he heard their laughter. 

But there was an undercurrent of unease that slowly strengthened. He was unsatisfied in some indefinable way. He thought he was just a selfish bastard. He has everything and it’s all so nice, so why? It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fulfilling–the intimacy. It felt like going through the motions. Step-by-step instructions. No emotional intensity, just..please get it over with.  _ I can just pretend it’s something else. _

Eventually, to his horror, it became a repulsion to be with his wife. He hated himself for it. He could only imagine he was with other men and that’s how he would get through it. He felt like he was lying to her and betraying her, and in a way he absolutely was, but he was scared to death that he would lose his children whom he loved very much. Scared he would lose all of his friends, his family, his job with her father. Scared he would lose  _ her, _ because she was important to him. He did care for her. But a wedge was already forming and he and his wife became emotionally distant and indifferent towards each other. It was over, but they were still together.

Then, after joining a musical performance group through the local temple, he met a new friend. Another gay man who helped him feel a sense of belonging. How could he  _ not  _ have known what was going on in his own head? In his own heart? This friend helped him understand things like compulsory heterosexuality and the garden variety desire to do anything to win the approval of one’s parents. 

Kravitz did not have a romantic relationship with this friend, it wasn’t like that. Kravitz was too traumatized and afraid to pursue anything at all with anyone, but they did become very good friends, and this friendship helped Kravitz overcome some of his fears. It felt good to have another person like him to confide in and trust. 

At last Kravitz confessed to his wife. He could hide it no longer. And they fought. She cried. She was hurt,  _ very _ hurt, and she said a lot of things to him from this hurt place that at the time he felt he deserved to hear. (“Our whole marriage is a lie. You lied to me from the beginning, I thought I was with someone who loved me all this time and it was all a lie” were common themes among her accusations). But they were not especially well off, and could not afford to divorce or separate. She did not want him to be ostracized, he didn’t want her to struggle alone with the children. So they continued to live together and raise the children together. As friends. As a mother and father, but not lovers. It was.. okay. For a time.

His children grew older, and they grew up loved and supported. But it wasn’t ideal. Kravitz harbored immense guilt that he was setting a bad example for what a marriage looks like. His children never saw their parents kiss or show affection. Never saw them give gifts to each other on special occasions. Yet they were loved beyond measure, so he hoped that made up for it.

Then one day, he was killed. An accident. A random, unfortunate tragedy. The Raven Queen heard his soul crying out, long before death claimed him, crying out for belonging. And she intercepted and she said to him:

_ You can be my child, Kravitz. I will take care of you, shelter you, protect you, and you can be who you were always meant to be. But you must do my bidding. You must help me collect wayward souls for an eternity. Be yourself, but do not ever let that interfere with your sacred duty. Do you accept? _

Kravitz agreed. To be able to watch over his children in some haunted sort of way, it was an easy choice. That’s all that mattered at first. Not taking a lover, not his personal identity. He wanted his children to be happy. More than anything, and he was able to see that they lived good lives. They were better for having him as a father, despite his time being cut short.

And his wife–she remarried. She, too, found happiness. Real happiness. (An opera singer! incredible, just as she always wanted). And that, too, put his soul at ease.

The years went by. Decades. A century. He got better and better at reaping, and his living years became a distant memory. He was himself, fully and completely, in the afterlife. Beholden to no one’s prejudices. And yet… he took his job very seriously, and so he had very few lovers. Hardly any at all, for someone of his eventual age. But they felt right. It felt good to have unfettered attraction for, to have his heart broken by, to fall out of love with, to feel unsure about, to flirt with, and romance... other men. Exclusively. 

Then there was a long, great silence. His physical body and its needs long forgotten as centuries went by. He was pure soul energy, pure purpose–and that purpose was for the service of his Queen.

Then… suddenly. Out of nowhere. As random and unexpected as his own death, he fell in love. Fell in love with a beguiling and vexing elf, talented as much as he was unpredictable. And funny. Kravitz did not remember laughing so much in so very long. That alone lit the fuse to a memory of his own circulatory system. Of his own heart. But, Taako was also.. closed. Shut off, like a fan, snapping shut to all around him. Like an umbrella, only open under threat of duress and even then, hidden under veil of shadow. Protected by something or someone Kravitz sensed but could not make sense of.

They grew close. They talked for hours between his missions. They made excuses to keep on talking and then. And then. They kissed, and nothing has ever felt better than kissing Taako. Nothing has ever soothed him to his soul more than feeling his touch and the sheer electrostatic potential in his proximity. Taako…was exactly who he had wanted for ever. It truly felt like that. He felt like all the silly things romantic poets say. Like a flower opening towards the sun, like taking a first needful breath after drowning. Like a ship finding the shore. And Taako, he felt the same. Kravitz could tell in how he held his hand when he didn’t have to. In how Taako made food for him, in how Taako told him private things he told no one else. And Kravitz wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of his existence doing whatever it took to remain worthy of it all.

When he finally told Taako of his past, of his life before the Raven Queen’s service, Taako held him and let him cry in his arms. He held him while he finally broke down those distant, echoing emotions. How he still missed his children, and how hard it was to  _ not _ see his oldest child in Angus. How he felt his whole life was built on a selfish need for self preservation. He confessed that he worried Taako would recoil at learning he had been with a woman before, that he had been  _ married _ and a father. But he didn’t. He seemed completely unfazed, in fact. 

Taako kissed his temple and put his hands on the sides of his face and said to him, “Kravitz, you know I love you, right?”

Kravitz couldn’t argue, because of course he knew. But now his tears were no longer born of grief, but of happiness.

But Taako wasn't finished. "It's not selfish to want to be happy. Shit, it's not selfish to want to be yourself. I can't believe you've been thinking like that for fuckin' centuries. But don't worry anymore, cause Taako's gonna make your favorite meal tonight and then we'll have all the gay sex you've ever wanted."

Kravitz laughed and hid his face against Taako's neck. "I love you, too."


End file.
